5 Essential Elements for Your Pharmacy Website.



Do you have a website set up for your pharmacy?
Today, people use the internet for everything. Why flip through the yellow pages to find a business when a quick Google search will yield a name, phone number, business hours, and an address with a map and directions?
Since your customers and potential customers are looking to the internet for their pharmacy needs, your pharmacy needs to have an online presence that makes an impact.
If you’re unsure how to get started, we’ve compiled a list of 5 essential elements for your pharmacy website.
Domain Name
Your domain name is the address for your website. Each domain name is unique and must be purchased. Think of it as virtual real estate.
You’ll want to choose something easy for your customers to remember and related to your pharmacy, like Shop for over 300,000 Premium Domains. However, it’s possible that if your pharmacy has a common name that the domain name will have already been purchased, so you might have to get creative. Instead of Shop for over 300,000 Premium Domains, you may have to buy Charlies Pharmacy - Charlies Pharmacy | Mullens Community Pharmacy or Your Reliable Wellness Partner.
Once you choose a domain name, you have to figure out how your website is going to be built. If you’re technologically challenged, I would advise investing in a company or an individual that specializes in building websites. There’s so much that goes into building a website, such as who will host your site, that it might be better to consult a professional.
Layout
The layout is like a map for your website. It’s the color scheme, what pages are available, how the menu leads users to these pages. The layout is important. It needs to be user friendly and look nice.
Companies like WordPress have customizable sites ready to be filled with content and directed to your purchased domain. You can pick a layout from their templated theme options and work entirely on your own to create your website. This is a good option if you have some tech skills, would rather not pay someone to build your site for you, and want to be able to edit the content on your site
However, if you are willing to make that investment or don’t have faith in your tech skills to complete that task, hiring someone to create a website for you is a great option. They may be able to supply you with something more unique than a template to work in.
Whether you choose to build the site yourself or hire it out, you will need to select the pages for your site. This will be different for everyone based on what you want your site to focus on. Some examples of pages are home, services, contact, blog, staff, and patient testimonials.
Content
The content is the meat of your website. It includes all the information, images, and other media that users will consume while visiting your site.
You’ll create content for each page of your website. The type of content will vary based on the page. For example, a contact page would be as simple as having the address, phone number, and email address for your pharmacy. However, your home page may have a video tour of your pharmacy, your mission statement, a picture of your store front, and news feed.
The key to good website content is to make it easily consumable and pleasing to the eye. The text on your pages needs to not only be relevant to your patients, it also needs be structured in an easy-to-read and appealing way.
You want visitors to be able to scan the page and pick up the key points of your message for that page. You achieve this by using clear and bold headers, breaking up longer blocks of text into smaller paragraphs, and interjecting graphics and video into your content.
Refill Request Tool
This is where meeting the needs of your website visitors comes into play. Many of the people that visit your website will be current patients looking for a convenient way to refill their prescriptions or manage their account. The best way to serve these people is to give them access to an online portal.
This capability is probably beyond your basic website template and would likely cost an arm and a leg to have fleshed out by a website professional. Even if they could create a portal for your patients, it’s likely that it wouldn’t communicate with your pharmacy management software and may not be HIPAA compliant.
A better option may be to look to your pharmacy software partner for this service. The most innovative partners will be able to not only provide your patients will a convenient way to request refills, but an entire patient portal with other essential information about their account and medication regimen. The refill request tool should be able to communicate with your software, dropping those prescriptions in your pharmacy refill queue.
You should connect your refill request tool to your website via an interface or a link. This ensures that their information is still securely stored on the protected servers provided by your software partner, but it is made available to them on your pharmacy website.
Mobile Capability
We’ve all seen those websites that aren’t mobile capable. They look just like the regular site fit to your tiny three inch by four inch phone screen. Seventy-five percent of the page is missing, forcing you to scroll until you find what you’re looking for. You have to zoom in to click on anything or read any of the text. This is not mobile friendly.
A mobile friendly site scales to fit the screen of your mobile device. All functionality is optimized for a mobile device, including drop down menus and large text. To ensure that your website is mobile capable, check that the template you’re interested in has mobile template pages or discuss mobile functionality with your website professional.
With web presence being a must for virtually all businesses, you can no longer put off setting up a website for your pharmacy. By working on obtaining these 5 elements, you can create a website that will not only please your current patients, but bring in new business.
If you are looking for an easy way to set your pharmacy up with the latest technology, check out IIH Global!

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